"Tolerance is really a better thing than understanding. Because it doesn't agitate against human nature."
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Quote collection
Fran Lebowitz quotes (page 3 of 20)
389 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"You're only as good as your last haircut."
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"I doubt there's ever been a true thing said on Fox. Maybe the weather report, maybe not."
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"Having been unpopular in high school is not just cause for book publications."
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"No one earns $100 million. You steal $100 million."
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"The telephone is a good way to talk to people without having to offer them a drink."
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"I never took hallucinogenic drugs because I never wanted my consciousness expanded one unnecessary iota."
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"No animal should ever jump up on the dining-room furniture unless absolutely certain that he can hold his own in the conversation."
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"Think before you speak. Read before you think. This will give you something to think about that you didn't make up yourself - a wise move at any age, but most especially at seventeen, when you are in the greatest danger of coming to annoying conclusions."
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"Calling a taxi in Texas is like calling a rabbi in Iraq."
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"Radio news is bearable. This is due to the fact that while the news is being broadcast, the disk jockey is not allowed to talk."
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"Japanese food is very pretty and undoubtedly a suitable cuisine in Japan, which is largely populated by people of below average size. Hostesses hell-bent on serving such food to occidentals would be well advised to supplement it with something more substantial and to keep in mind that almost everybody likes french fries."
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"I love sleep because it is both pleasant and safe to use. Pleasant because one is in the best possible company and safe because sleep is the consummate protection against the unseemliness that is the invariable consequence of being awake. What you don't know won't hurt you. Sleep is death without the responsibility."
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"Polite conversation is rarely either."
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"Vegetables are interesting but lack a sense of purpose when unaccompanied by a good cut of meat."
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"Inhabitants of underdeveloped nations and victims of natural disasters are the only people who have ever been happy to see soybeans."
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"One of the big mistakes they made in Europe is that the circumstances in which you most frequently read or hear the word "race" or "racism" in Europe applies to Muslims. Which is not a race. It is a religion. You can convert to this. You cannot convert your race. I could become a Muslim. I could not become a Chinese person or a black person. So they constantly use that in Europe."
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"People (a group that in my opinion has always attracted an undue amount of attention) have often been likened to snowflakes. This analogy is meant to suggest that each is unique - no two alike. This is quite patently not the case. People, even at the current rate of inflation - in fact, people especially at the current rate of inflation - are quite simply a dime a dozen. And, I hasten to add, their only similarity to snowflakes resides in their invariably and lamentable tendency to turn, after a few warm days, to slush."
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"When I was very little, say five or six, I became aware of the fact that people wrote books. Before that, I thought that God wrote books. I thought a book was a manifestation of nature, like a tree. When my mother explained it, I kept after her: What are you saying? What do you mean? I couldn't believe it. It was astonishing. It was like--here's the man who makes all the trees. Then I wanted to be a writer, because, I suppose, it seemed the closest thing to being God."
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"I'm not interested in being a wife. I'm interested in being an empress."
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